Swap Navi DVD Drive with regular DVD Drive?
 

Hey guys,

I'm tired of my navigation not reading my Navi Disk half the time. And I dont have $500 to spend on a new drive, so... I was wondering, is it possible to use a regular DVD Drive with the system. I was thinking maybe the 3 connectors on the back on the Navi drive are like the IDE connector on a regular Drive, and the small connector in the corner is the power. So maybe they can be spliced and made together into an IDE connector and plugged into the regular DVD Drive. Its a longshot I know..... Any ideas however?

Otherwise, Is it possible to go to the older Hard Drive Navi that was found in the unfacelifted TL?

Thanks

haha ... i opened this thread to see if i could get some info to help u envyace, then i realized ur the thread starter ... btw i think only the 99 was hard drive based, the 00 and 01 which are also unfacelifted are dvd based :thumbsup:

Since i'm not sure if u can use a regular dvd drive, I found this drive from a CL on ebay for less then half the price of a brand new one http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ACURA...spagenameZWDVW

the small connector in the corner is the gps antenna connector. The other 3 connectors on the drive handle all things from RGB output, AUDIO output, data lines to communicate with the touch screen, power, backup power, illumination, etc. They are not just an ide cable. Good idea, but not possible. ANd you don't want to go back to the harddrive based ones, a) they crashed a lot b) they held no where near the amount of info the dvd drives can hold on one disk.

Id say pop the broken unit open and take a look at how the actually drive connects to the board of the NAV unit. If you see an IDE connector you may be in luck...

Here's another option.

Alpine Electronics, which makes the DVD box, has a program where you can send in a malfuctioning Navigation unit and they'll repair it for $158. That's assuming, of course, that it can be repaired. If they can't fix it there is a $30 diagnostic fee.

See the "Out of Warranty" repair section of the following Acura Service Bulletin 96-025 for details on where to send it. (Thank Paul Mooney for hosting this bulletin on his navhelp.com web site.)

I would call Alpine first before sending the unit to make sure that the repair program is still in effect. (You might have to use Google to find a phone number.)

http://navhelp.com/TSB-96-025.pdf

Good Luck!

Bob

Thanks for replies guys.

I dont rmr seeing an IDE connector when I opened the unit for cleaning the lens (using alcohol); which seemed to do nothing by the way.

I'll look into the alpine soln.

Thanks again

Just a quick update and question.

I looked again inside the Navi Unit, and it seems the DVD Drive is connected to the rest of the Unit with a 1 or 1.25 inch wide push-in ribbon cable. I dont know what its called exactly, which is what I need help with. Is there some sort of converter from this push-in type ribbon cable to an IDE cable? The ribbon cable is somewhere around 20 pins, and IDE is somewhere around 40 pins.

Take a pic, could be a laptop connector...

Heres what a standard laptop cdrom connector looks like
http://benryves.com/images/toshiba/cdrom_connector.jpg

I'll take a pic by this weekend (im back at school), but I dont think its the one in the pic above.
It looks exactly like this ps2 cable, only like a half an inch wider.

http://www.netpcdirect.co.uk/eject_ribbon.php